Nature Go Home : Exhibition by MOTOR

OPENING EVENT March 10, 6-9 PM
Co-Prosperity Sphere
3219 S. Morgan St.

An exhibition comprised of arranged encounters between domestic robots and raw nature.

Wipebot.
Vacuumbot.
Grillbot.
Windowbot.

Leaves.
Log.
Grass.
Water.

What happens when robots and nature meet? Will there be too much for the robots to handle? Will nature be put into order?

MOTOR is: Margrét Agnes Iversen (Iceland/Denmark), Malte Klagenberg (Denmark), and Laurits Nymand Svendsen (Denmark).

In our exhibition we want to explore how the ways in which we think about nature can be riddled with ambiguity. For example, when autumn leaves fall and decompose in the forest we can admire nature’s cyclic beauty, but when similar organic processes occur closer to home, when molds start growing in the fridge, it feels like a nuisance. It is as if our ideas of what nature should be only allow it to unfold in specific contexts. The domestic robots present in the exhibition represent our habit to make order in our surroundings. By juxtaposing the robots with “raw nature” (found objects such as leaves, logs and rocks) we want to explore how ideas of nature can equally exist as something romantic and trivial. These robots also serve another role in our exhibition. A condition that often seems to feed the division between nature and humans is the amount of control we are able to exert on the rest of the planet. Having this kind of power often means to assume a type of caretaker role – a role in which we can still very much maintain our distance to the rest of “nature” as we organize it according to our interests. But what happens when you try to pass on the caretaker role to another agent, in this case the robots? Could we build a scenario in which it’s possible to imagine our influence over nature being totally removed? Would this potentially make us feel closer to nature?

GALLERY HOURS
March 11-12 & 21-24 1-6 PM


More info:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1944894195744109/